Weil Gotshal & Manges appoints Sarah Flaherty as a partner to bolster its London M&A offering

Weil Gotshal & Manges appoints Sarah Flaherty as a partner to bolster its London M&A offering

The US law firm Weil Gotshal & Manges has added an M&A partner Sarah Flaherty through lateral hiring from the Magic Circle law firm Linklaters in London.

Flaherty advises on a wide range of issues such as public and private M&A transactions, corporate restructurings, joint ventures, and equity offerings.

She has become the third London partner to quit Linklaters this month. Jessamy Gallagher and Stuart Rowson, global infrastructure co-heads at Linklaters moved to Paul Hastings last week.

Flaherty also becomes the second corporate partner after Nick Rumsby to quit the firm in recent months. Rumsby had quit Linklaters in November to join Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton.

She will be working with a team of corporate lawyers that the firm Weil considers to be among the best in the market. They include London managing partner Mike Francies, Marco Compagnoni, co-head of the international private equity group, and David Avery-Gee, who previously worked at Linklaters and joined Weil in 2019.

"Sarah will play a key role working alongside David Avery-Gee, Murray Cox and our M&A teams in the US and Europe to further strengthen our M&A offering," Francies said, adding that they are delighted that she is joining Weil.

Flaherty had a 14-year stint with Linklaters and was promoted to partner in 2020. She worked on several major deals including the Belgian beer maker Anheuser-Busch InBev's £78 billion acquisition of the South African beer firm SAB Miller.

Her other notable deals include advising Takeda Pharmaceutical in its £46 billion acquisition of UK biopharmaceutical company Shire in 2019 as a part of a team.

While Flaherty was a partner at Linklaters, she spent two years working at the UK Takeover Panel. At the Panel, where she held the role of a senior case officer, which involved regulating public M&A transactions.